Page 48 of Rancher's Return

But as he deepened the kiss, she did press on his chest. “I’m hungry,” she said.

“Me too,” he growled, kissing her neck. She shivered.

“For pasta, not your penis.”

He stepped back and barked a laugh. “Well, you have a way of putting a man in his place.”

“I’m not trying to,” she said. “I’d like to have dinner. Also, I’m too nervous to go having sex when the kids could just appear at any moment. Or at least, my kid could. When she’s in school, great. But otherwise... We have to be careful.”

“Yeah. I hear you.”

“All right. Pasta.”

“Just tell me where the best place is, and I’ll take you there.”

She picked her favorite restaurant, because she could, and the two of them got sparkling water, slightly to the chagrin of the waiter, she could see.

“You can have wine in front of me,” Buck said. “I don’t care.”

“It’s fine. I don’t really drink much. It reminds me of...bad times. So, it’s not really a relaxing escape for me.”

“Fair enough.”

“I wanted to thank you. For earlier today.”

“No. The fact that it left you craving fettuccine instead of more of me doesn’t exactly feel like a standing ovation.”

She looked at him, feeling a shiver go down her spine. “I am craving you. But I’m also trying to be reasonable and rational.”

“I think I might be incapable of that.”

They ordered their entrée, and her stomach went tight. She really did wish this dinner would end with a kiss at her door. And her inviting him in.

She really did want him again.

“This is not a date,” she said, looking resolutely at her menu.

“Of course not,” he said.

They got their entrées and bread, and talked more about business, rather than steering the conversation back into the personal.

She looked down at his hand, the way it gripped the fork, and thought of the way he had touched her.

“So, you do have to tell me.”

“I have to tell you something?”

“Yes. How has your...love life worked, exactly, for the last twenty years?”

“Oh, now you have questions.”

“Yes. Because you are very, very good.”

“Well. Thank you for the compliment. I... The honest truth is that when I was kind of off the rails there for a few years, it was a lot of sex. Mostly anonymous. I... I didn’t care, about anything. I didn’t want connections. I wanted oblivion.”

“I relate to that.”

“But after I started working at the camp, it wasn’t that simple. Everything I did had to be a lot more...deliberate. I had leave every year, and every year I would take myself off somewhere faraway, to a tourist spot, find a woman and spend the week with her.”

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